Text: John 18:12-27

When I encounter a story, as we do this week in the Lenten scripture, about the arrest of an innocent and about accompaniment by a companion, it starts to feel pretty close to home. Pretty familiar. 

Stories of arrest and accompaniment are all over the news and social media and in conversations that I’ve been having with people recently. I know a number of people who have walked with people on their way to immigration hearings. Heard stories of visits to people in detention. We’re seeing people being arrested out of their cars, out of their homes, from gas stations, on the street, at their immigration hearings.

Those of us who are not in danger of detention or deportation have an opportunity to be accompaniment companions to folks who are going to their hearings. Who are being arrested? So that’s what I was imagining as I was thinking about this story of Jesus being arrested, being taken violently by the empire’s henchmen, being brought before an authority who doesn’t really know him or care that much and yet he has to defend himself.

Meanwhile, Peter wants to be a companion to him, be a good disciple, to go along as far as he can with Jesus. But he’s also afraid for himself and trying to be strategic and self-protective. It is a fearful and tense situation.

There’s a disconnect between Peter’s desire to be as close to Jesus as possible – he has told Jesus basically that he’s willing to die, to go all the way with him, risk it all – and how he acts that out. A disconnect between that desire and the words that he speaks about his relationship to Jesus. It made me wonder about how that would play out in a contemporary situation.

Keeping in mind that I have not accompanied anyone to an appointment or witnessed a detention or arrest, (Some people here in our congregation have actually done that heart-wrenching work.) a scenario played itself out in my head: 

Someone in my school community is arrested or has an immigration appointment. (This has definitely happened) They are scared and they need to show up and to defend themselves. They know they’re going to be facing in authorities who can decide their future. They know they will have to answer questions. They are worried about violence. About being separated from their children. They may face detention.

I’ve been called on to accompany that neighbor. We get to their appointment at the USCIS office in Tukwila. The community members is taken inside – through the metal detectors and into the maze of stanchons and ticket windows and offices. Instead, I’m met by guards in the lobby and someone says, are you with that person? You can’t come in if you’re if you’re doing accompaniment.

And so I say, oh no, I don’t know who you mean. I’m doing something else. I’m here for my own appointment. That might get me though the gates. But I wonder how that would be experienced by the person who I’m accompanying. 

I also imagine I’m in a situation where the officers who arrested this person, who took them off the street or out of their car say, hey, weren’t you the one taking the video of us? I saw you out there on the street. 

I might say, No, I didn’t have anything to do with that or I don’t know them. That too might get me a little bit further into the building. Or maybe I try to chat up those same officers while they’re having a cigarette break outside of the building. I wonder if getting to know them might allow me to have a little more influence in the case of my neighbor.

My denials also keeps me safe while my neighbor is inside, fearful, facing questions and challenges and scrutiny. I can justify the denials. They might even be solid strategic reasons. But they do remove me from risk. When I am already the one who is safe.

So much lately I have felt what Peter feels. Not this exact situation but a feeling both of wanting to be in solidarity with the folks who are being targeted for arrest and deportation and detention and also wanting to hide or run away or lean on the privilege I have of never having to acknowledge my privilege. I already admitted: I haven’t joined folks who need accompaniment to their appointments. 

The monologue from Dan, inhabiting Peter’s frame of mind, does some interpretive work. Peter sounds reflective and regretful. In John’s telling it’s not clear to me that he even realizes what he’s done. He may indeed just be thinking, how can I get to Jesus, without reflecting that the words coming out of his mouth are negating his relationship.

In Matthew, Mark and Luke, when the roosters crows, that’s the wake-up call. Peter’s eyes are opened. He immediately remembers what Jesus predicted. Here: not so much. We don’t get a look into Peter’s thinking. We’re left on a bit of a discordant note.

But what is that if not just like life. We have a gift in the stories of Peter and the other disciples who are constantly trying to discern what it means to be a disciple. To be a student. Like any discipline (disciple is part of the word!) takes practice. 

I had a former spiritual director who would say, when I lamented how hard it sometimes is to answer the question, “How are you?” (like now) that I could answer, “I’m in the messy middle.” 

This is the mess. It’s the dissonance of wanting to follow, maybe even of thinking I am following, but being held back – by a barrier put in my way like the door blocking Peter from the courtyard – or by our own hesitation or fear or uncertainty.

We are, all of us, just muddling along in the messy middle.

We do know a couple of things about Peter that offer us hope. (This is the other good thing about having the whole Gospel story, even when we’re dwelling in the dissonance of this moment). First, that Peter is not really going to change from being a bit impulsive – like jumping off the boat into the water to get to Jesus when he sees him on shore after the resurrection. It will still take him awhile for something to get through. 

But he does keep trying to follow, to make it to Jesus, to be a leader to Jesus’ followers, to share the message of the Gospel, to care for God’s people. We also know that Jesus has endless patience, love and compassion for Peter. Even in the mess. Jesus has high hopes and continues call Peter to discipleship. 

Maybe you identify with someone else in this narrative. That’s often the case; we each connect to different parts of the story. Me? I’m Peter all the way. If you are like me, let us thank God that Jesus continues to call us to discernment of how to follow, how to serve him and serve God’s people and the world. And let us be grateful too that Jesus is full of care and compassion, loving us even when we are stuck between solidarity and self protection. In the messy middle. Amen.

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